Please note: we have been online over ten years, and we want The Trek BBS to continue as a free site. But if you block our ads we are at risk.Please consider unblocking ads for this site - every ad you view counts and helps us pay for the bandwidth that you are using. Thank you for your understanding.

Welcome! The Trek BBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans. Please login to see our full range of forums as well as the ability to send and receive private messages, track your favourite topics and of course join in the discussions.

If you are a new visitor, join us for free. If you are an existing member please login below. Note: for members who joined under our old messageboard system, please login with your display name not your login name.

To pile on a bit, I got a bunch of notes on the proposal for The Klingon Art of War, but most of them were of the "don't forget to do this or that when you write the manuscript" variety. And the final manuscript had no changes whatsoever -- and this was a project that was actually originally conceived by John Van Citters at CBS, the guy who does most of the approvals.

...and this was a project that was actually originally conceived by John Van Citters at CBS, the guy who does most of the approvals.

Although just to be clear, that's not the way it usually works. Contrary to the widespread myth, it's usually the authors who come up with the ideas, or the editors who come up with the basic ideas and assign authors to flesh them out into full stories. The studio rarely initiates the projects. Generally, the licensing people serve more or less as informed beta readers who advise us on continuity, character consistency, and the like. Granted, they do have the authority to make their suggestions stick, but JVC and Paula Block tend to wield their authority very gently, and usually just point out issues and allow us to come up with our own solutions.

__________________Christopher L. Bennett Homepage -- Site update 11/16/14 including annotations for "The Caress of a Butterfly's Wing" and overview for DTI: The Collectors

Although just to be clear, that's not the way it usually works. Contrary to the widespread myth, it's usually the authors who come up with the ideas, or the editors who come up with the basic ideas and assign authors to flesh them out into full stories. The studio rarely initiates the projects.

I can see that working for individual novels but how does it work if an author wants to start a novel series?

Marco Palmieri conceived Myriad Universes, and KRAD was offered to start I.K.S. Gorkon after he developed the ship and crew in two stories. Seekers, instead, was the idea of David Mack, Kevin Dilmore and Dayton Ward, correct?

In general, who is responsible for starting a novel series?

__________________
1.000 years: University Leipzig, 1409-2409Gorn to be wild!

^As your examples illustrate, it depends on the series. Usually it's the editor who proposes something large-scale like that, but sometimes it's an author or authors who have the basic idea and get the editor on board.

In either case, though, it's usually not the studio employees that come up with the ideas. The editors work for Pocket Books, the licensee.

__________________Christopher L. Bennett Homepage -- Site update 11/16/14 including annotations for "The Caress of a Butterfly's Wing" and overview for DTI: The Collectors

^As your examples illustrate, it depends on the series. Usually it's the editor who proposes something large-scale like that, but sometimes it's an author or authors who have the basic idea and get the editor on board.

In either case, though, it's usually not the studio employees that come up with the ideas. The editors work for Pocket Books, the licensee.

Exactly. Depending on the project, there's a certain degree of back and forth between the editors and the authors, but I can't think of a case where I got a call to the effect that "CBS really wants a novel where Gary Seven fights the Borg. Can you get us an outline by Thursday?"

Usually, it's more like "We need a TOS book for Fall 2014. You got any ideas?"

I finished Book 2 of 3 for the Destiny Trilogy and it is great! It's epic and important and I love how it's basically a crossover between every existing Trek crew/character at once. It's great to see a final massive apocalyptic war with the Borg. I thought the Erika flashbacks took up way too much screentime, but I obviously understood throughout that she was going to be the means to ending the Borg War (no spoilers! I'm just assuming).

I always felt that the non-Shaternverse novels never managed to achieve that sense of big screen movie epic-ness, but Destiny certainly has.

I'm on the last 100 pages of Destiny and it's quite excellent so far but we'll see what the ending is like... so I see that the next story is "Typhon Pact" and its many many books... is it one story or are they all stand alones? Is it any good?

I'm on the last 100 pages of Destiny and it's quite excellent so far but we'll see what the ending is like... so I see that the next story is "Typhon Pact" and its many many books... is it one story or are they all stand alones? Is it any good?

I'm on the last 100 pages of Destiny and it's quite excellent so far but we'll see what the ending is like... so I see that the next story is "Typhon Pact" and its many many books... is it one story or are they all stand alones? Is it any good?

Actually, the next story is my own A Singular Destiny, which looks at the ramifications of the trilogy on the galactic stage, and also sets up the Typhon Pact books. Then there are books in the individual series -- TNG, Voyager, Titan -- that show the aftereffects of Destiny for those three ships (in the case of Voyager also the setup for it).

Actually, the next story is my own A Singular Destiny, which looks at the ramifications of the trilogy on the galactic stage, and also sets up the Typhon Pact books. Then there are books in the individual series -- TNG, Voyager, Titan -- that show the aftereffects of Destiny for those three ships (in the case of Voyager also the setup for it).

Or, as we called them collectively, "Cleaning Up Mack's Mess."

__________________Christopher L. Bennett Homepage -- Site update 11/16/14 including annotations for "The Caress of a Butterfly's Wing" and overview for DTI: The Collectors

I finished the Destiny trilogy and I loved it! I posted my thoughts on the thread about it. I've been watching the important Voyager episodes because of it (I'm watching Endgame right now)... I have the first two VOY relaunch books so I'm curious to try those now even though I don't like VOY.